Luminos
by Helena Lucia
Summary: Alternate Reality. Somewhere in Ancient Greece, Loki finds a dead child and calls him Stephen for honour. A protégé of deception, tinged with dark madness. Stephen will sleep a hundred and eighteen years for his crimes.


_** Luminos: Deception**_

* * *

_**Disclaimer: Neither Ancient Greece, nor Thor or Captain America belong to me.**_

* * *

It was the generation of the pre-dawn sun, where gods and monsters walked among men, driving the young world to prosperity and madness. The philosophers of the era had said, that in those times all the world was a den of hedonism.

During this age of excess, Loki, known as _Hypnos_ to the Grecian mortals, appeared as the spirit of dreams and sleep, ascending to the earth wearing the form of a hawk-eye statue.

And when the days reached the third night, Loki discovered a dead child on the oceans sands within the ruins of a villa, who opened his eyes, to watch the spirit approach. He called the child Stephen, _honour_, for the stark-blue of his eyes, and circumstances of his birth.

* * *

Loki took Stephen to Dione, the capital city, and entrusted him to Margaret, Queen of Dione, revealing himself a god for on account of superstitions she would not deny a deity.

Loki watched Stephen as he grew older and offered no rebuke when the boy deceived his friends with honeyed words.

* * *

"Yesterday, I slew a sea serpent near the west coast." The boy had said, blue eyes glinting. "A dark one with green scales and yellow eyes. Look, I have brought one of it's fangs as a token of my victory." And around his tanned throat hung a braided cord wrapped about a smooth, sharp tooth. Loki knew that it was but a hoax, cleverly carved from the bones of a dead dragon that the boy had slain.

"A half-truth." Said Stephen afterwards.

"Surely to kill a dragon is a more noble achievement?" Murmured Loki, but the child only shifted his shoulders.

"It matters little, which beast I have slain. I only wished to know if they would tell the difference between the bone and the false tooth."

And Loki laughed at his protégé as he vanished. Such a strange mortal child.

* * *

"One day, I will be king." Stephen says to Margaret, azure eyes gleaming. "I shall rule as a god would, grinding our enemies bones to little more than the dust upon the Colosseum floor, and conquering the sunlit isles."

"Perhaps, you shall, Stephen." Margaret intones, voice light and amused, but believing. Loki knows that Stephen cares little for Dione and patriotism, preferring to play wars games upon the oceans, amidst gods and mortals and spirits. It is not the crown that he craves, that slim silver band worn as a title of ironic delusion.

* * *

Yet when Stephen falls from a cliff in a moment of inexplicable insanity, gasping for breath as the icy water invades his lungs, Loki intervenes and heals the boy before he wakes. The Queen, offers praise to the gods and spirits for sparing Stephen's life, and the boy himself inclines his head towards Loki's alter, a soft prayer for grace upon his lips. Loki listens, but returns no answer to his devious charge.

* * *

Loki's ward kills the Queen when he reaches three half decades, and becomes King with the turn of the moon, before Margaret is cold in her tomb.

Stephen is as brilliant a king as he is a tactician, though oft seized by moments of heedless darkness. The people of Dione call him_** beloved of the gods**_, for his face is of their deities statues, and when he is two decades old he ceases to age upon his patron's whim. Loki smiles.

He marries exotic princes and princesses from foreign lands, and lures them into following the soporific tones of his voice off the cliff and into the rush of crashing waves beneath when Stephen tires of them.

Stephen may be beloved of the deities, but Loki does nothing when Thor, known as _Thanatos_ to the Greeks, calls after the boy.

* * *

"Will you take me now, Thor?" Enquires Stephen. "I am but a child. I beg you, do not take a babe's soul, but come back when I am older."

Loki projects his amusement. "You can not cheat death, forever, _beloved_."

Yet Thor leaves, and returns in five years time.

* * *

"Would you take me now, Thor? Look upon me for I am only two and a half decades. Are you so cruel as to deny a young mortal's request? I pray you, leave now and come back within five years. I swear I shall follow after you next time."

But Thor will not leave.

"Be silent, trickster child." He chides. "Your soul was due when you were an infant, and when you were but a youth, and then five years ago, but I pardoned you because you were loved by Loki." Says Thor.

"Have I not offered you chances for redemption, and seen you refuse them all? Instead you have driven eighteen young men and women to misguided self-slaughter with your words and beauty."

"What shall my penalty be?" Asks the young king. "Does Loki no longer deem me worthy to be his charge?"

"Loki can do nothing for you now, according to the laws of the All-father." Says Thor, but there is no anger in his tone. "As punishment child, your empire will be drowned, and for one hundred and eighteen years you will lie chained with your dead lovers on the ocean floor. After you have served your time, you will be released. " Thor intones, and Stephen likens his voice to the rush of the ocean and ice behind his eyes.

* * *

So Stephen sleeps with the dead upon the seabed, trapped in dreamless slumber as his guardian watches.

"Perhaps, child," Says Loki. "I may grant you this parting gift."

For one hundred and eighteen years, Stephen lies, entangled within the bodies of his dead lovers, sleeping with open eyes.

Loki watches, and waits.

* * *

**_Author's Note: An idea I have wanted to try out for a while. Darkish!Steve is a lovely concept. In regular mythology, Thanatos was the god of death, while Hypnos was his twin, the personification of sleep.  
_**


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